Whataburger #1 with cheese, dry with pickles only and a large Diet Dr. Pepper has been my staple meal for my life and the last 5 Ironman’s that I’ve trained for. Sometimes I would switch things up and have a single pattie melt meal with no onions. One of my favorites was the Bacon, Avocado Burger that only comes out for limited times. Add some spicy ketchup and my day was perfect. If you don’t live in Texas and haven’t had Whataburger you don’t know what you are missing.
Surgery/Recovery+ minimal training+old female= 14+ pound weight gain.
I managed to avoid facing my weight gain for 4 months by not getting on the scale. Note to self do not wear leggings post op in the future. While they are very comfortable and work with the CPM machine and don’t catch on crutches they also manage to give the false sense of security that your clothes fit. I can’t imagine how much weight I would have gained if I’d hung out in a snuggie.
I remember waking up in the hotel room the day after surgery in Vail . Brian being the good husband that he is had gone to the store and bought some of my favorite foods. These are also basically off limits in our house normally. He’d proudly lined up directly in my field of vision next to the TV these treats- Pop Tarts and several assortments of dark chocolate. Now I absolutely love pop tarts. Like love them in the cannot have them around or I will eat the entire box right now love them. I also grew up having a pop tart and coke for breakfast every day. I ate Strawberry and my sister Wendy had the Cinnamon Brown Sugar Pop tarts. Brian knows that pop tarts are my weakness but he knew they were my comfort food and he had them ready. Yes, I ate every one of those pop tarts. He gets several points in the good husband book for buying those pop tarts.
When we came home from Vail he was in charge of cooking as I wasn’t able to walk or carry things. This meant we ate a lot of fast food and Ted got to ride in the car a lot. He also went grocery shopping and brought things into our house that haven’t been here in years. One day he came home with bags of food and started unloading his bounty of treats like a kid at Christmas. I looked at all of these treats and said something to the effect of -WTF is all of this?
There was no need for us to have 3 kinds of cookies and 6 boxes of cereal in the pantry. I think he was stocking up for the future . He was thrilled to have discovered all of these new items at the store that had never been in our house before. Now don’t get me wrong our diet is not clean nor is it free of fast food. But we’ve never had 6 boxes of cereal in our small pantry at one time before.
I can’t blame my weight gain on anyone else but myself and some pesky hormones. Being told by my doctor that my ovaries were having a “going out of business sale” and dumping as much estrogen into my system as possible wasn’t exactly what I wanted to hear. This added one more challenge/obstacle to getting the weight off like I’ve been able to do in the past.
If I was going to take the year off to recover from surgery it was also the time to get my nutrition cleaned up. I’ve always had the excuse that I was training for X race and couldn’t change my nutrition or Whataburger habit. Well this year I’m not training for any races and there aren’t any excuses to not clean things up. Now that I currently weigh more than I have in 10 years is also a high motivation to make some significant changes.
The month of May was spent trying to lose weight by my normal semi-clean eating habits. Still eating some Whataburger’s just not as many as usual. It didn’t work and nothing was budging (except my stomach and new boobs) and none of my clothes fit. As I refuse to buy an entire new wardrobe there was only one choice left and that was to hand over my nutrition planning to a dietitian. Come to find out my semi-clean eating habits weren’t even close to eating what I was supposed to be eating and when. All of the kale/spinach/green/chia smoothies in the world aren’t going to offset non-nutritional food choices.
It’s been a few weeks and we’re still fine tuning the new changes and my ability to cope/accept them. It hasn’t been easy and I’ve been as Brian would call it “hangry” more often than normal.
I’ve had cycled between moments of thinking I can do this for life to I’m going to kill someone if I don’t eat junk food right now.
At low points I’ve even entertained the thought of just giving up and not ever exercising again and becoming a person of Walmart. Hey, I’ve already got the leggings might as well get the booty to match and go shopping with my thong hanging out.
One thing that I am confident of is the changes that I am making will add years to my life, health and sport. Nutrition has always been the missing link in my racing and training. I’m excited about using this year to address all of my limiters and turning them into strengths. Whataburger hamburgers will probably always be a part of my life. It just won’t be it’s own food group in my daily diet.
fitnfeistygirl 